Kevin McCullough is one of the rising stars of conservative talk radio. He shares his talk show, Xtreme Radio, with actor Stephen Baldwin. They take on today's most controversial issues with a common sense approach. Kevin is the author of several books, including Musclehead Revolution and The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be.
Let's start off with the back-story. How did you get started in talk radio?
I was working in Christian radio at Moody Broadcasting for a number of years in Chicago. I felt like God was moving me out of time and temperature and weather forecasts and pulling me into something that used more of my background as a theology and journalism major. I began to write op-eds while I was still at Moody, but I didn't publish them anywhere. I realized that that substance debate within me was growing, so over a period of time I transitioned to a Salem radio station there in Chicago. Through some twists and turns in the broadcasting industry in 2008 God created a vacuum in my life that allowed me to have time for the development of (Xtreme Radio). We were very thankful for the input from people like David Limbaugh, people like Peter Theo and some others, real icons within both the conservative and talk radio industry, who came alongside of us and really volunteered their efforts and their time to help us get going. It's been a little over a year since Xtreme Radio has been on the air.
I think everyone's going to want to know how you got Stephen Baldwin involved in all this!
I had moved to New York in 2003 to do a show there. And Stephen's wife, the lovely Mrs. Baldwin, was listening. She listens to Christian radio all the time. And she had my show on and she's using the butcher knife and she's chopping the vegetables for the dinner that night and she's talking out loud to no one in the kitchen. She's like, "That's right, you tell 'em!" "That's what I'm sayin'!" Stephen comes down and he's like, "Sweetie, who are you talking to?" And she's got this butcher knife in her hands and she wheels around and points the butcher knife at him and says, "You need to be more like that guy!" Stephen started listening and he's always been a junkie of talk radio. And so he called in and funny enough, I didn't know who he was! But he, for no explainable reason, befriended me and out of that friendship grew a real, simultaneous passion to reach the fifteen to thirty-four generation.
We call that demographic the Millenials. Tell our readers what you're doing to reach them.
They are probably more ravenously hungry for truth than I ever was in those stages of my life. This is a generation that is really committed to substance. We believe that this particular group of 15-34 year olds that Arbitron has said have stopped using the radio altogether we thought there was some truth to that, so we committed ourselves to being multi-dimensional in our delivery system content. We have a live, televised chat room that happens concurrently on the web at the same time as the traditional media and we also do a lot of live events with those groups. If we can supply content through major motion pictures, through projected images on television, through an internet viral reality series that we've called Xtreme Bites—the idea that we can somehow impact the experience that they go through, that's our goal, that's our passion, that's our drive.
And we are just excited to have a discussion every Saturday night 9-11 eastern to examine the moral component of every aspect of life. It doesn't matter if its in pop culture, music, etc. or if its in politics or the news of the day, what are the moral rightness and wrongness of society and what we're dealing with? And can we move to a place where we have greater moral clarity in life? So I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to do what we're doing and to bring that moral discussion to living rooms, car stereos, and kitchen radios every Saturday.
I don't think there's ever been a time when it's been more important for the youth, and everyone else, for that matter, to be involved in policy. You've been talking a lot about healthcare reform, even calling it 'Gestapo-care.' What's that all about?
I didn't call it that until the White House blog asked people to report on their neighbors if they disagreed with the president. If you historically understand that the Gestapo was the part of the SS who were basically empowered to report on their neighbors, to be the nannies of everyone else around them, that's what the White House asked us to do on its blog when it said, 'if you receive emails, if you are seeing web sites or if you're having casual conversations in which people are spreading "disinformation." And given what this administration seems to already have the penchant to do, and that is interpret things to their advantage at all times, if you just have a different opinion about it or draw a different statistical conclusion that doesn't square with their numbers, I could be considered to be someone spreading disinformation. As I told Cavuto on Fox News, the executive branch of government has no business monitoring my own private discussions about health care. So, on that level alone, I think that it is a Gestapo-like tactic that they were trying to very subtly encourage.
Now the White House has gotten itself into a bit of a pickle because everything that comes to the White House has to be saved for the National Archives. That's federal law. But they've promised the press corps at the White House that they have no intention of keeping the emails. Now someone's lying. Someone's not telling the truth!
Judging from the reactions at town-hall meetings across the country, Americans have had enough. Are you encouraged when you see people taking a stand?
Absolutely! I was very discouraged on election night to see 43 percent of evangelicals embrace a candidate who did not espouse any form of Christianity in his worldview. What I'm encouraged by is that eight months in Americans still have the capacity to get angry. And I think that since we are a center right nation, if we do get angry and we do speak with clarity, that we can, in fact, even impact change on a Congress that has veto-proof power, that has filibuster-proof power, that has all of the ingredients that should be in the position to steam roll us. You know what really gives me hope? Seeing the desperation from the other side in response to the town-hall meetings—the accusations that these are all bused-in groups of community-organized activists that are speaking out. To hear them talking, you'd think they were describing a Rainbow Push Coalition meeting or an ACORN summit! These are average men and women, Democrat and Republican.
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Xtreme Radio is heard on more than 190 stations around the country.
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